International legal theorists posit historical moments when conceptions of justice are “constituted
by, and constitutive of, the transition” (Teitel). This article uses the framework of transitional
justice to understand the cultural work of political allegory in the spring of 1660 on the eve of
the English Restoration. Insights from transitional justice (1.) help explain how Anglican royalists
convinced wary Presbyterians to assent to a restoration of the monarchy; (2.) permit a new
reading of Milton’s allegory of Sin and Death in Paradise Lost; and (3.) facilitate a more critical
history of the framework of transitional justice itself.